Hello, how are you all?

Doing well.

I think now we're good, Mayor.

Okay.

Well, then it is 532.

And we will officially call this meeting to order.

Just so folks have a sense of the agenda.

We're gonna start with kind of the state of Richmond update from Wendy.

And she'll specifically focus on key areas related to education, transit, constitutional amendments, and budget impacts.

From there, we'll move through our bills, same process as last time.

I'll go through the no positions, the oppose, the support, um, and we'll pull any ones that are needed for discussion, but we're not gonna go through um each number.

So with that, Wendy, I'm gonna kick it over to you.

Or did you want to approve the minutes from last time first?

Um problem.

Um, can you please make a motion to approve the minutes from last time?

Yes.

Yes, I I moved to approve the minutes from the uh legislative subcommittee meeting on January 9.

Okay, is there a second?

Do I have to second this one?

Yeah.

So I forgot this is actually the committee.

All right, it's second.

It's been uh the motion has been moved and appropriately seconded.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, any opposed?

No, the I sat it.

The minutes are approved.

Now we will turn it over to Wendy for our official update.

All right.

Well, thank you, Mayor Gaskins.

We just I just completed the first uh full week in Richmond, and it is a uh big blur, but it was a lot of fun.

Um and I wanna do what the mayor said, which was talk about four issues, school funding, transportation funding, the constitutional amendments, and the budget update.

And uh school funding, uh, there's a a couple of bills that are would raise the sales tax by one percent that would um allow for more funding for school construction.

Uh one of those bills on the House side was reported out of uh the subcommittee.

Uh, we testified in support uh with the Alexandria City Public Schools lobbyist as well, um, highlighting our shared need for sustainable tools to address our aging school facilities.

Um that is moving forward.

One, uh there's a couple of other bills that have sort of similar iterations to them that uh we just have to watch what they're doing.

But that bill seems to be soaring through and um should go through as one of the first bills in the General Assembly.

Um, on transportation funding, there are two sets of cognate companion bills.

There's um, so but what I'm saying is that there's House and Senate companions for two different uh versions of a bill that would look for transportation funding.

And thanks to Raymond for really diving in and giving me good background on all of those bills.

Um the first bill is a broad transportation revenue package.

It raises revenue by modernizing and expanding the tax base.

So you can actually see tax rates might go down, but the amount of things that they want to tax would go up to raise money for transportation, predominantly in Northern Virginia, but it would also raise funds for uh transportation across the commonwealth.

Um, the second bill more aligns with um what is commonly called the SJ28 plan.

It uh it has it it really just focuses on uh local transit systems like Dash and Commuter Rail addressing known operating and cap capital funding gaps, but it also does provide funding for other um transit projects across the commonwealth.

The idea is uh raise funding to make sure that we can uh pay for Womata and the needs of Northern Virginia, but by doing that, you also have to make it so that it's attractive across the commonwealth.

Um what I would say about those two sort of they're they're not competing bills, those two different discussion point bills.

It's not quite sure which one leadership likes right now.

So there's a bit of a pause while we figure out which one we want to put our backs into or whether we combine some aspects of those two different bills and move forward.

So we're um we're all sort of waiting for uh which bill do we start really lobbying for and lean in on.

Um the next is the constitutional amendments, and they cleared the General Assembly really quickly.

They are all passed, and there's scheduled to be a referendum, uh, particularly on the redistricting bill, um, the uh mid-decade redistricting bill.

That that's actually gonna be on April 21st.

Um, the other three, the affirmative right to marry, the restoration of votes following completion of a felony sentence, and access to reproductive freedom, they have all passed as well.

And we just have to wait and figure out when they're gonna hold those referendums, probably in November.

Um, and again, I just want to highlight that members of our delegation are championing those uh all of those amendments in some way.

So um it's really exciting for us.